Taking Advantage of Opportunity

Everywhere we stand is replete with opportunity. Every situation we engage in offers a chance to learn more about ourselves and the world in which we work. Every conversation, every observation can bring us a chance for improving.

Great learners pay attention to the usual situations not just the rare ones. We watch what makes our ordinary world work as well as the extraordinary. We see what attracts people to us, what the like-minded and the like-hearted people find of value in us. We also can learn a few things about what might work against us.

Two Things You Can Learn from Spending Time with Like-Minded People

One thing about social networking is the self-sorting way that it brings us to be in groups of like-minded and like-hearted people — people all looking and thinking in the same direction. Some folks call it the “fish bowl.” People often discuss the downside of staying in a group that shares the same disposition and thinking, the same biases and similar expertise. Among other things, if we’re not careful it can become safe and comfortable. Being in a group of like-minded people can narrow our vision and curb our opportunities to learn about the world and ourselves. Yet it can provide its own insights if we look.

It’s hard to get more like-minded than someone who shares your DNA.
I’ve been thinking about what I’ve learned by spending time with my son.
I’ve learned at least two things.

What people value in you. When my son was about 16, I considered a particularly positive interaction we had. It got me to thinking. My thoughts went to the reasons I liked him as a person — his intelligence, his quick wit, his positive, sweet way of considering other people. I had the thought It’s easy to see why people like him. Then I realized that we had those traits in common, that those traits we value are ones he valued too. It was then I knew that I could learn a lot about what people value in me and what I value by looking at what I value in like-minded people I attract.

How people invest in you. Now my son is about 26. And recently we had a significant block of time to work together on a project. I saw how tenacious he can be about solving a problem, how other people’s answers don’t work for him, and how much I reinvested in each conversation in an effort help reach a conclusion. It got me to thinking. My thoughts went to the reasons that I find him intense — his singular focus, his search for rightness and truth, his unwillingness to wear a suit of clothes that doesn’t fit. I had the thought It’s easy to see why people might find him exhausting. Then I realized that we had those traits in common too, that those traits we might find exhausting are ones he might find exhausting too.

If you want to know who you are look at your friends — those like-minded, like-hearted people you spend your time with. See what you value in them. See what you invest to help them. Pay attention this week to the people you choose to work with. You’ll learn a lot about you.

by
Rosemary O’Neill

What? Youâre not perfect? Nah, me neither. But hereâs a little secret: itâs what you do after a problem, crisis, or failure that really counts.

As an entrepreneur or small business owner, every day offers new opportunities to learn, grow, and strengthen your enterprise. When you take the time to document your learning experiences, youâre getting leverage for the future. Iâm the child of an Army officer, so I refer to these as âafter-action reports.â

Once youâve weathered the storm, and the dust settles just a bit (not too much), do the following:

Bring together all of the players
Itâs essential to get together in an atmosphere where thereâs no blame assigned. It should be in the spirit of doing things better next time.

Figure out whet led up to the crisis and whether it could have been avoided
Was there a broken process that led to the problem? Perhaps youâll decide that the problem could not have been avoided, and focus on how to respond next time.

Assign someone to document and make recommendations for change
Ask someone on the team to write a summary, and suggest ways it could be done better next time. If youâre a solo entrepreneur, this would be an ideal time to tap into your mastermind resources or your mentor. Itâs possible they have already been through a similar situation.
Share the recommendations
Be sure to share the recommended changes with everyone on the team. Sometimes retraining or new training is necessary. Reinforce the training with some roleplaying if itâs helpful.

Not Everyone Has the Context You Do

A few days ago I got another phone call from a person I met several months ago. He said his name and then said,I’m launching a new product and I’m wondering if you’d like to see a demo.

“What?” was all that I could think of to say.

When he’d called, I’d been knee deep in writing a proposal. I was well into the context of the strategy I was developing and that strategy had no connection to the name or the random question that had just interrupted it.

After an uncomfortable few minutes of asking questions of my own, I managed to find out who the person was and why he was calling me — he wanted to enlist my help. After all, we were connected.

The disconnect in this “connected” thinking is that I can’t help everyone with whom I have a conversation, much as I might be inclined to be the helpful one. My life, my family, my friends, and my landlord demand their own part and parcel of my time. So I can’t stop my own goals to pursue others’ quests just because they ask.

No one can.

It’s hard enough for any one of us to determine where to lend our support to the most noble of quests within the time we have in our lives.

If you’ve got a quest that needs support, help yourself and the people you might ask by being able to tell us the information we might need to make that decision before you ask.

4 Things to Tell Before You Ask

Lead with relationship and context. Let me know who you are. Your ask or offer will get turned down if it’s bigger than the trust in the relationship. Set the context for your conversation by establishing what that relationship is and why that trust exists. How do I know you? Why are you an expert at what you’re about share?

Be clear on what you have. Let me know what your quest is. Tell me what exactly you’re talking about. be able to say it in 25 words or less. If you still need paragraphs of detail, you don’t know what it is.

Connect your me to your quest. Let me know why you’re asking ME and not every turnip that that falls off the truck. Tell me why you’re asking me — why you believe my expertise will be a valued contribution to your success. That will pique my interest in your quest. If you’re asking everyone, you haven’t considered what any one person might offer and that anyone can do what you ask.

Make helping easy, fast, and meaningful. Let me know how little I have to do to help. the facts. Don’t tell me about your disappointments. Think of what I might expect the product to be and then make sure I know if something in that definition is missing.

Anyone with more than one friend has to find a way to decide which friends to help and when. When you move beyond close connections, it sure helps if the “friends” asking lets us know that they’ve thought enough about their quest to start with trust.

Asking isn’t easy. Saying “no,” isn’t either. But time is the only resource no one has enough of.

Take the time to understand and prepare for the four points above and you’ll save time because you’ll contacting the right people with the information that they need to answer faster with a yes.

by
Rosemary O’Neill

The GPO Style Manual was my Bible. But technical writing for a Federal Government contractor was slowly sucking the soul out of me. Iâm not knocking it in general, but it really wasnât for me.

Then one day, my supervisor called me into her office, and there sat a red-faced, genial guy with an easy laugh. His name was Dave Denne, and he changed the course of my life for the next 10 years. He was looking to recruit someone to join his marketing team, and he thought I might have the right stuff. My supervisor was dubious, but for some reason Dave believed in me. He persuaded her to let me jump ship, and I literally leapt at the chance.

Over the next several years, he taught me everything he knew about corporate marketing, networking, business communications, and specifically Federal proposals. Iâll never know why he came and plucked me out of the Flood Insurance Project, but it changed everything for me.

I share this story because often we donât realize why certain people or opportunities are placed in front of us. The universe sends us messages all the time, and we simply need to be in receptive mode to tap into them. Are you in receptive mode right now?

I found out the other day that Dave passed away several years ago; he and I had finally fallen out of touch, but I will always be grateful for his invitation to start another path. He left me with the ability to walk up to a group of strangers at an event with confidence, and an amazing recipe for barbecue beans.

Perhaps we all need mentors for a certain time and place. Do you have a mentor right now? Who is giving you an invitation to a new path?

When I was in college, I had a vinyl recording of the London Philharmonic performing “The Planets” by Gustav Holst. On the back of the album cover notes were written on each movement of the music, each named after one of the planets the world knew then and each with a few words of poetic wisdom. Of all of them, I remember only one sentence that has stayed with me for decades now. It was with the movement called “Neptune.” The sentence read:

What the mind yearns for most is not to know, but to believe.

For years I considered it forward and backward. I wondered about it and applied to situations in my life.I asked myself whether knowing or believing was the core of everything. Which defined me? Which moved me forward? In the last few years, I’ve come to see it as it was written and understand this way …

I can know what are my strengths and talents. I can understand with my mind what values and value I bring to the table. But if I don’t believe what I know, I undermine them. If I choose not to see what I see right in front me, if I choose not to know what I know, and instead listen to other voices around me, I’ll never be a work of art, I’ll simple be a mirror — at best a reflection. No matter how perfect a mirror, it’s can be replicated by silvering some glass and placing where I stand. What’s in the room decides what’s in the mirror.

A mirror brings nothing new. A mirror is all give back and no give.

But if I believe in my own ability to see what I see — to look for and find my own world view and experience — then I learn how to believe in what I know. And other people begin to take interest in my thinking despite the curved lines and the flaws.

Art brings a new view. It gives and can give back too.

All true leadership and influence starts with a compelling core belief based in knowledge.
Competence and commitment are the fuel that ignites a call to action.

Stop right now. Ask yourself, what do you know?
What would it take for you to believe that?
Then act on what you believe and know.

You will have your true north direction.
And knowing where you’re is irresistibly attractive.

Every leader should take their responsibilities seriously and treat their position as one of great importance. Whether you manage one employee or a thousand, your actions and attitude will determine the success or failure of those who work below you. Even the best employee will fall to pieces in the face of a bad leader, and even the worst employee can rise to the expectations of a great motivator.

That being said, one position of leadership requires an extra level of care and vigilance when it comes to cultivating the right culture and producing the highest possible level of motivation and productivity within their employees. That position is the leader of a small business. Due to the small, intimate and hands-on nature of the position, the leader of a small business holds a truly disproportionate sway over their employees and their organization.

Taking Small Business Leadership Personally

To successfully lead a small business you need to take great care of your own time and energy. All leaders lead by example, and need to appear to be someone worth following. Leaders of larger, more impersonal firms may be able to fake these qualities, but leaders of small businesses work so closely with their employees that few secrets can exist between them.

If you constantly run into problems of low energy, flagging motivation, lack of time, an inability to prioritize your work, and a near-constant disconnection with the larger picture of what your organization hopes to achieve, then you better believe your employees will notice your malaise, and eventually mirror it themselves. Any attempts to direct your employees when you are clearly incapable of taking care of yourself will be met with skepticism at best, and resentment-filled-refusal at worst.

As the leader of a small business you need to personally embody everything your organization stands for and you need to clearly demonstrate everything you expect from your employees.

Staying Connected with Your Employees

Simply demonstrating a rock-solid command of your personal resources isnât enough. If you are the leader of a small business, you need to remain personally connected with your employees at all times.

The internal culture of a small business is incredibly intimate but itâs also often very stressful, centered on everyone constantly firing on all cylinders. If, in your work-oriented myopia, you lose sight of who your employees are as people, you will lose your ability to connect with them in a meaningful way. If you stop connecting with each of your employees on a one-on-one basis, then you will lose their trust and respect.

When you lose your employeeâs trust and respect you will lose the ability to speak with them candidly, to learn where they are feeling overwhelmed and where they feel they can contribute more to your shared goal. A small business quickly becomes something of a family with you at the head, and if you choose to embody the âdistant parentâ archetype your employees will return the favor and play the âsurly teenagerâ role, doing just enough to get by but never feeling understood or appreciated.

It isnât enough to embody incredible qualities while keeping your employees at a remove, just as it isnât enough to connect constantly with your employees but to fail to inspire them with your personal conduct. Yet by combining the two, you will become the sort of leader that every small business employee dreams of working for.

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Author’s Bio:
The post is written by Wilson Campbell. He is a HR professional, with an exceptional skills to understand knowledge and behavior of employees. He not only has subject matter expertise, but he is also adept in team building and team building activities.

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